Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo Review Update 04/2024

This central processing unit (CPU) cooler was formerly known as the Hyper 212, but was eventually replaced by the Hyper 212 Plus. In 2011, Cooler Master released the Hyper 212 Evo as a replacement for the Plus, and it has seen consistent updates ever since. The majority of the improvements have gone into making the heat pipe and cold plate design more efficient, as well as improving the fan.

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Specifications

Packaging and Accessories

The Hyper 212 EVO comes in a cardboard box with Cooler Master’s trademark aesthetic.

On the front of the box, you’ll find a photo and the cooler’s model name; on the other sides, you’ll find detailed instructions. The requirements are extremely specific:

Some users may find the diagram showing the cooler’s dimensions to be helpful.

The cooler is further safeguarded from harm by being wrapped in plastic before shipping. Included in the package is a set of extras:

A pressure plate in the shape of an X, a back plate, two plastic pieces for attaching a second fan, a tube of thermal grease from Cooler Master, screws, nuts, and bushings, and an instruction manual are all included.

China is home to production of the Cooler Master 212 EVO. At around $35, it’s about $5 to $7 more than the Hyper 212 Plus. There is a 2-year guarantee on the product.

Design and Functionality

The Hyper 212 EVO looks identical to the Hyper 212 Plus, except that it has a more sophisticated fan called the Cooler Master Xtra Flo.

The cooler is still the same size it was before. Its original dimensions of 159 x 80 x 120 mm remain unchanged.

Although it still weighs 569 grams, that’s 57 grams lighter than before. This is because the fan is lighter (104 vs. 166 grams) and the base of the cooler has been slightly redesigned. However, the overall layout remains the same. A total of 57 aluminum plates, each measuring 0.5 millimeters thick, are still used to make up the heatsink, and these are press-fitted onto four copper heat pipes measuring 6 millimeters in diameter. The distance between each pair of fins is only 2 m.

On the heatsink, you’ll find a 120mm fan mounted in one corner.

Roughly 6400 square centimeters of heatsink area is used. To ensure that the heatsink’s fins receive an even distribution of that heat, the heat pipes are laid out in a checkerboard pattern.

The company that made this heatsink claims it works well with both slow and fast fan speeds. The product has a unique fan and an adjustable fastening system that works for everyone. A second fan can be attached to it.

We think that the Hyper 212 EVO’s direct-touch technology is its most innovative feature.

Improved heat dissipation from the CPU is ensured by the absence of aluminum inserts between the copper heat pipes. In the lingo of Cooler Master, this is referred to as CDC, or Continuous Direct Contact.

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It can be seen that the new technology is meant to guarantee a 5% lower temperature and a 6% larger contact zone. With fewer spaces for heat to escape, the efficiency of the system should improve. The bottom of the cooler is flat but not polished to perfection.

There is a single Xtra Flo fan, with dimensions of 120 x 120 x 25 mm, included with the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO.

During our evaluation of the Cooler Master Hyper 612S, we came across a fan with the same impeller. PWM controls its rotational speed from 600 to 1600 RPM, with a corresponding range of 9 to 31 dBA in noise, 24.9 to 66.3 CFM in air flow, and 0.3 to 1.7 mm H2O in static pressure. Its sleeve bearing has an expected uptime of 40,000 hours, which is equivalent to 4.5 years. Maximum power usage of the fan is 2.28 watts. We determined that it required 3.2 watts to operate and required 3.8 volts to initiate operation. Two plastic tabs that fit into slots on the heatsink’s sides hold the fan in place. If you want to attach a second fan, there is a spare set of attachments in the package.

Compatibility and Installation

The AMD Socket AM2( )/AM3( )/FM1 and Intel LGA775/1155/1156/1366 platforms are all supported by the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO. To mount this cooler on an LGA2011 motherboard, you will need to purchase a separate mounting mechanism, which is sold separately.

Putting in this CPU cooler is the same as putting in any other Cooler Master CPU cooler. The mainboard is secured by inserting threaded bushings into the mounting holes and tightening nuts through the back plate.

After that, you place the cooler on the CPU, apply thermal grease, and secure it with the X-shaped plate’s spring-loaded screws.

Avoiding a fan will make your job much simpler. After you’ve secured the cooler to the CPU, you can connect the latter. The locking mechanism is extremely reliable. The back plate keeps the motherboard from flexing, and the Hyper 212 EVO doesn’t swivel or move on the CPU heat-spreader.

There isn’t a lot of room needed for a Cooler Master in your computer case. The following image shows it in place:

A comfortable 44 mm of clearance exists between the cooler’s underside and the motherboard. The memory slots on the motherboard are not obscured by the cooler, which is narrow.

Testbed and Testing Methodology

All tests involving the cooler were carried out in an enclosed laboratory. Take a look at our testbed set up:

• Gigabyte GA-X58A-OC motherboard (Intel X58 Express, LGA 1366, BIOS F5c as of 09/06/2011);
• A 3.33 GHz, 1.225 V, 6 x 256 KB L2, 12 MB L3 (Gulftown, B1) Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition processor;
• Polar MX-4 as the thermal interface;
• Asus Radeon HD 6770 DirectCU Silent (EAH6770 DCSL/2DI/1GD5) GDDR5 128 bit, 850/4000 MHz (with a passive heatsink from the DeepCool V4000 VGA cooler);
• Memory: DDR3 1600MHz 7-7-7-24 1.65 V OCZ Platinum Low-Voltage Triple Channel;
• System drive is a RAID-0 array consisting of two Kingston V-series SNV425S2128GB SSDs (SATA-II, 128 GB, MLC, Toshiba TC58NCF618G3T controller);
• Scythe Quiet Drive 3.5″ HDD silencer and cooler encasing a Western Digital VelociRaptor (300GB, SATA-II, 10000 RPM, 16MB cache, NCQ) for use as a program and game drive;
• Samsung Ecogreen F4 HD204UI (SATA-II, 2 TB, 5400 RPM, 32 MB, NCQ): backup drive
• The Antec 1200 is the system case (with three 1020 RPM Noiseblocker NB-Multiframe S-Series MF12-S2 fans on the front panel, two 1020 RPM Noiseblocker NB-BlackSilent PRO PL-1 fans on the back panel, and a standard 200 RPM fan on the top panel).
• Zalman ZM-MFC2 controller with built-in temperature and humidity monitoring;
• Xigmatek’s “No Rules Power” NRP-HC1501 is a 1500 W supply (with a 140 mm fan as standard).

A multiplier of 25x and “Load-Line Calibration” (Level 2) turned on allowed us to overclock our six-core processor (with its default non-lapped heat-spreader) to 4.3 GHz. In the motherboard BIOS, we bumped up the processor’s nominal Vcore voltage to 1.3875 V:

While running our tests, we turned off the Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading features. 1.5 V was used for the memory’s voltage, and the memory’s speed was 1.38 GHz with 7-7-7-16_1T timings (Extreme profile). There were no changes made to any of the other overclocking-related settings in the motherboard’s BIOS.

The testing was conducted on a system running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Service Pack 1. During our testing, we utilized the following programs:

• Version 0.18b of the CPU Stress Test (CST) to stress the CPU (matrix #15; 10–12 minutes);
• To keep tabs on the temperature of the CPU core, you can use Real Temp GT 3.64.
• Version 1.5 of CPU-Tweaker includes graphical temperature and frequency monitoring.
• You can keep an eye on your voltages with Gigabyte’s Easy Tune 6 B11.2303.1.

So, here is the full screenshot from the trial run:

Two CST benchmarks were run in a row on the CPU with the parameters described above. Between the two test cycles, the CPU temperature stabilized after about 8-10 minutes. For the graphs, we used the highest recorded temperature from the hottest CPU core. In addition, we will give you a table containing the temperatures measured in each core and their averages. An electronic thermometer with 0.1 °C accuracy was used to check the surrounding air temperature next to the system case, allowing for hourly monitoring of temperature variations over the previous 6 hours. During our testing session, the temperature in the room shifted between 24.5 and 24.7 degrees Celsius.

After running each cooler for an hour at night in a 20 square meter room, the CENTER-321 electronic noise meter recorded the decibel levels. Each cooler’s decibel rating was determined when it was placed in a soundproofed room with only the cooler and its fan as potential noisemakers. The cooler fan rotor was kept at a constant distance of 150 mm from the noise meter, which was mounted on a tripod. On a piece of polyurethane foam set at the far end of the desk, we put the cooling systems under test. Our noise meter device has a minimum noise reading of 29.8 dBA, and the subjectively comfortable noise level in these testing conditions was around 36 dBA. By varying the voltage by 0.5 V increments, we were able to control the speed of the fan(s) across their entire operable range with our custom controller.

We’re going to put the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO up against a cooler by Thermalright that sells for almost the same amount of money, the Thermalright True Spirit ($29.95) tested with just one of the included fans.

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Each cooler was put through its paces with its fans spinning at a range of speeds, beginning at 1000 RPM and increasing by 200 RPM increments up to and including the default PWM model (600-1600 RPM for Hyper 212 EVO and 1100-1700 RPM for True Spirit).

Performance

Cooling Efficiency Tests

This table and the subsequent diagram (organized in descending order of efficiency) show the outcomes of tests conducted on the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO and its competitor.

The Thermalright True Spirit’s PWM-regulated fans outperform the new Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO by 6 degrees Celsius in terms of efficiency. This is a considerable sum, especially considering how much less expensive the True Spirit is. Also, at the same RPM for the fan, Thermalright’s cooler is more effective than competitors’ offerings by a margin of 7°C at 1000 RPM, 6°C at 1200 RPM, and 4°C at 1400 RPM. As a result, the Hyper 212 EVO performs worse than the True Spirit in every efficiency test.

We also tried both coolers with two fans each, and while this did reduce the peak temperature of our six-core CPU by 2 to 4 degrees Celsius (depending on fan speed), it did not significantly improve performance. Finally, it’s time for the decibel level.

Acoustical Displays

We determined how loud each cooler was across its entire fan speed range. The outcomes are depicted in the next diagram:

The Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO’s Xtra Flo fan performed admirably. It operates quietly due to its sleeve bearing, with noise levels increasing in direct correlation to rotational velocity. No extraneous noises, such as those usually produced by CPU coolers, were detected, meaning that the Xtra Flo will not annoy you even when operating at full speed, which is highly unlikely.

At low and moderate speeds, the Hyper 212 EVO is on par with the Thermalright True Spirit, while at higher speeds, the latter is noisier.

Our Thoughts

The Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo remains a top pick for many because it is reasonably priced, compatible with all current socket types, and widely available. The Evo 212 is designed primarily as a drop-in replacement for original equipment manufacturers (OEM) coolers, but it can also support light overclocking.

Of course, the benefits don’t necessarily transfer over to AMD and Intel when used as a replacement for the stock cooler. In contrast to Intel’s stock cooler, which guarantees noticeable cooling and noise performance gains when upgraded from the manufacturer, AMD’s Wraith coolers offer only marginal cooling headroom.

It’s a universal and reliable mounting solution, but it’s a little too complicated to be ideal. The Hyper 212 Evo is compatible with the latest Intel LGA 1151 and AMD4 sockets, so you can use it with your i9-9900K or Ryzen R7 2700X without any hassle.

For cooling, the Hyper 212 Evo uses a single 120mm PWM-enabled fan. This allows it to be connected via a 4-pin connector and regulated by the motherboard based on the current demand and temperature. But there’s no fan splitter in the box to make adding a second fan simple. If you want a push/pull configuration, you’ll need to either have a surplus of fan headers on your motherboard or be ready to provide your own splitter.

There is no LED lighting of any kind in the Hyper 212. It’s an inexpensive option that gets right to the business of keeping things cool without any unnecessary frills.

Value and Conclusion

The Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo is a great option for those looking for a high-quality cooler at a reasonable price. Our only reservation is if you already own an AMD Wraith cooler.

There is not much of a performance gap between the Wraith cooler that AMD provides as a freebie and the Hyper 212 Evo. Intel, meanwhile, has gone in a different direction with its mainstream central processing units.

Intel’s default coolers produce a lot of noise, don’t perform well, and collect a lot of dust. If the price of the processor doesn’t increase too much, upgrading to the Hyper 212 Evo is a good idea. The Hyper 212 Evo usually sells for $30, but you can often find it on sale for much less.

However, the Hyper 212 Evo is also a good choice for those who value silence or who want to experiment with modest overclocks without risking their system’s stability.